5/19/2006 @ 12:20PM

Who Killed Paul Klebnikov?

After two acquittals, we’re left wondering.

The Moscow murder trial of two Chechen defendants accused of gunning down FORBES Russia Editor Paul Klebnikov ended with a “not guilty” verdict May 5. Not what you expect from the Russian judicial system, where juries seem to act like prosecutors’ rubber stamps.

The government, which is appealing the verdict, theorizes that the two Chechens, Musa Vakhaev and Kazbek Dukuzov, staked out Klebnikov’s office on the evening of July 9, 2004 and that the murder was orchestrated by Chechen warlord Khozh-Akhmed Nukhaev, the subject of an unflattering book by Klebnikov. Nukhaev, if he is alive, is a fugitive.

Much about this case remains shrouded in mystery, not least because the trial was conducted behind closed doors. The ostensible reason for the secrecy was to protect the participants. The jurors feared for their lives, and Russia still doesn’t have a well-developed witness protection program. Paul’s brothers, Michael and Peter, have been outspoken in demanding justice. To represent the family, they hired Larissa Maslennikova, an attorney who helped craft Russia’s criminal code. “She caught some serious procedural violations of the trial rules,” says Michael.

The prosecutors reportedly portrayed Dukuzov as the gang leader and gunman. Investigators said they had found evidence linking Dukuzov to the scene of Klebnikov’s murder. Vakhaev was thought to have assisted in the procuring and then disposing of the car. Evidence that investigators thought would link the men to the murder included cell phone records that put them close to the FORBES office on many evenings in the two weeks leading up to the attack. Witnesses said the same phones were used to call friends and family and were abandoned days after Klebnikov’s murder. There was evidence that the acquitted men were over- heard saying they had “a big job” coming up and that they would be getting money from London soon.

Apparently working against the government’s theory about the triggerman: the assertion by Alexander Gordeyev, editor of Russian Newsweek, who worked on the same floor as Klebnikov and came to his side after the shooting, that Klebnikov told him he had seen a “Russian” in the car, meaning a man with features that tend to be lighter and finer than those of a person from the Caucasus region.

During the Klebnikov murder trial Dukuzov was tried for additional crimes and was acquitted of all. These include robbery, attempted murder and the murder of Yan Sergunin, former deputy premier of Chechnya, who was killed approximately two weeks before Klebnikov.

Sergunin’s death gave rise to an alternative theory circulating on Russian blogs about the motive for the Klebnikov assassination: that it was arranged to prevent the journalist from writing a story exposing corruption in Chechnya.